Fire Ants: The Material of the Future?

What can a creature with a brain smaller than a pinhead, have to teach us about the nature of physics, robotics and the future of advanced technology?

For the fire ant, what it may lack in size, it makes up for in millions of years of evolutionary genius. Over the winding road to the modern fire ant, it has made more than a few adaptations that are, to say the least, incredible.

So, what do I mean when I say that a fire ant can be incredible? Well, let’s start with this: Did you know that a colony of fire ants can be considered a material? Better yet, a material that can be a liquid or a solid?

A group of remarkable scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Biolocomotion Lab has done just about anything you can do to a colony of fire ants, to test their remarkable capabilities. For example, coating them in gold, submerging them in water, and tying them together. They have been able to not just learn about a small corner of the natural world, but find inspiration for cutting-edge technology.

At Ever Widening Circles, we talk a lot about the importance of breaking down silos of thought. It’s all a matter of asking better questions: What are the novel possibilities when art informs the way we study biology, or when the natural world alters the future of robotics? Also, where are the threads of connection between seemingly disparate systems?

How do fish swim in schools, or birds fly in giant flocks without running into each other? Take a look at the tiny swarming robots that are helping us understand some of nature's most complex phenomena!

Ingenious people will take the fascinating properties of a fire ant colony way beyond being fun facts. And the best part about this train of thought: it is but a fraction of the inspiration that can be gleaned from the millions of years of iteration that nature has done over the course of our planet’s evolution.

Discover More

Are humans the only species that use medicine to improve our quality of life? The answer is changing the future of medicine for our species, and opening up a new world of possibility for the future of our health!

The insane regeneration abilities of the axolotl make it quite possibly one of the most interesting animals in the world. Whether regrowing limbs or hosting the body parts of their axolotl peers on their own frame, these creatures are incredible oddities of nature!